Redstate

Posted at 10:28am on Jun. 19, 2008 Three cheers for Iraq!

now president bush should declare venezuela state sponsor of terrorism

By AcademicElephant

Two major news items from yesterday may seem unrelated, but both have serious ramifications for the intertwined issues of terrorism and energy. On the one hand, we had the excellent news that western oil companies are preparing to go back into Iraq after 38 years. On the other hand, we had the very very bad news that the Treasury Department has established economic ties between Venezuela and Hezbollah.

Read on to connect the dots...

Posted in Foreign Affairs | Hugo Chavez | Iraq | NO BLOOD FOR OIL | Saddam Hussein | Venezuela — Comments (2)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:40am on Jun. 13, 2008 The Keystone Kops Show In Venezuela

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

The Economist has the details on Hugo Chavez's attempts at providing political leadership. Once again, we see that Chavez is good for a laugh or a dozen:

HUGO CHÁVEZ has never been one to worry about a little inconsistency. Venezuelans, along with their neighbours, have become accustomed to his habit of switching from firebrand to conciliator and back again, with barely a pause for breath. But even by his own remarkable standards, Venezuela's left-wing president has recently been showing new virtuosity in the art of making surprising U-turns.

In January this year he told a startled world that the FARC guerrillas in neighbouring Colombia should be treated not as terrorists, as they are by most countries, but as an "insurgent force", with rights under the laws of war. On June 8th he surprised everyone again by calling on the same guerrillas to give up the struggle they had waged for four decades, release their 700 or so hostages and recognise that guerrilla warfare in Latin America "is history".

In this latest reversal Mr Chávez is plainly doing his belated best to extract himself from an embarrassment. Computer files seized by Colombia during a raid on a FARC camp inside Ecuador two months ago appeared to confirm that Venezuela has been helping the guerrillas--and that Mr Chávez's call for an upgrading of the FARC's status was part of a strategy he had cooked up with its leaders.

At Colombia's behest, Interpol has inspected the computer drives and confirmed that they have not been tampered with. Venezuela says their content is fabricated: its government is mounting a propaganda offensive to convince the world of that. But the fact that many governments have been queuing up to ask Colombia whether their own intelligence services can see the files suggests that they believe the contents to be genuine. And although Colombia has its detractors in the region, most countries consider it bad manners to provide help to a guerrilla movement that is inflicting mayhem on its neighbour.

Even before the dent this affair has now put in his international reputation, Mr Chávez had troubles on the home front. In December voters narrowly rejected his proposal to rewrite Venezuela's 1999 constitution along "socialist" lines and include a measure that would provide for the indefinite re-election of the president. It was Mr Chávez's first significant electoral defeat after nearly a decade in power. Since then, he has sought to reintroduce elements of the rejected constitution, in part by using a far-reaching enabling law, passed last year, to legislate by decree.

But Venezuelan society has proven remarkably resistant. Teachers, parents and students have blocked the introduction of a politically inspired school curriculum and the abolition of university-entrance requirements. The private media forced a retreat on attempts to charge them exorbitant fees for material from a state-owned television channel. And a decree setting up a new intelligence-system, dubbed the "Gestapo law", was repealed on June 10th, less than a fortnight after its introduction, following an outcry from human-rights groups. This would have obliged people to co-operate with intelligence agencies or face up to six years in jail.

If Chavez can't provide stalwart and consistent leadership for his country, maybe it is time for him to get out of the way in favor of someone who can. I am sure that more and more Venezuelans would appreciate him doing so.

Posted in Foreign Affairs | Hugo Chavez | Venezuela — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:52am on Jun. 4, 2008 Can We Say "Dictator" Now?

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Come on. Can we?

President Hugo Chávez has used his decree powers to carry out a major overhaul of this country's intelligence agencies, provoking a fierce backlash here from human rights groups and legal scholars who say the measures will force citizens to inform on one another to avoid prison terms.

Under the new intelligence law, which took effect last week, Venezuela's two main intelligence services, the DISIP secret police and the DIM military intelligence agency, will be replaced with new agencies, the General Intelligence Office and General Counterintelligence Office, under the control of Chávez.

The new law requires people in the country to comply with requests to assist the agencies, secret police or community activist groups loyal to Chávez. Refusal can result in prison terms of two to four years for most people and four to six years for government employees.

"We are before a set of measures that are a threat to all of us," said Blanca Rosa Mármol de León, a justice on Venezuela's top court, in a rare public judicial dissent. "I have an obligation to say this, as a citizen and a judge. This is a step toward the creation of a society of informers."

Amazingly enough, this development will come as a shock to some people.

Posted in Authoritarianism | Contra Tyrannum | Dictatorship | Hugo Chavez | Tyranny | Venezuela — Comments (2)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 3:00pm on May 29, 2008 Obama May Visit Iraq, On One Condition

He Would Go to Ensure Defeat

By Mark I

The Obama campaign continues flailing around wildly when challenged on Sen. Obama's lack of foreign policy chops. Last week, Obama flipped and flopped over the issue of his pledge to meet with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, telling one audience that he would let Chavez set the agenda for such a meeting, and another that Venezuela should be internationally isolated.

This week, he is trying to "clarify" his promise to meet face to face, without pre-conditions, with the leader of Iran. Even the New York Times recognized the desperation with which the Obama campaign is trying to back off from the candidate's naive views on meeting with America's enemies.

Now Sen. Obama is under fire from Sen. John McCain for not having been to Iraq in over two years. McCain challenged Obama to go to Iraq and see the difference that the troop surge has made in that time. McCain even offered to go with Obama to show him around. The Obama campaign first dismissed the call as a "political stunt." But now it has decided that Obama may indeed go to Iraq, just not to see how American and Iraqi troops are winning the war. Obama wants to go to figure out how to withdraw.

This morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Obama campaign Communications Director Robert Gibbs said the following when asked if Obama would consider going to Iraq.

"Well, as he said yesterday Mika, it's under discussion about going overseas and going to Iraq sometime between now and the campaign. You know, I don't think we'll be taking that trip with John McCain because as Senator Obama said yesterday, the work that the men and women in our military are doing over there is just far too important for them to be props in some sort of political stunt or photo-op. You know, what they're doing over there is separated from their families, giving for their country. It's truly, truly amazing, and I think we would want to go over there and talk to them and see what sort of difficulties they're facing and see how it is that we can begin to carefully remove them and carefully bring them back to their families and bring them back to the United States."

The Obama campaign won't go to see how the U.S. is winning because that would constitute using the troops as "props" in a "political stunt" and "photo-op." But going over to find out the "difficulties" they are having and to figure out how to "begin to carefully remove them" is not? Nonsense.

The real story here is that Obama has no interest in what is really happening in Iraq, unless it fits his predetermined view that the war is lost. The message from the Obama campaign is clear. Sen. Obama would meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez without pre-conditions and without pre-judging the agenda items, but he won't go meet with the troops in Iraq unless it is on his terms. He would go to make sure America lost if it would help him win.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Foreign Policy Inexperience | Hugo Chavez | Iraq | Mahmoud Ahmadinejad | Obamafiles — Comments (58)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:00pm on May 27, 2008 Obama Takes All Sides on Chavez

Inexperienced and Naïve on Foreign Policy, Good at Campaigning

By Mark I

Another day, another position on Hugo Chavez from Sen. Barack Obama. Last week, he told the Orlando Sentinel that he favored meeting with the Venezuelan Marxist dictator He even went so far as to say that Chavez could set the agenda. But the very next day, he told a Miami audience that Chavez’s support for the FARC narco-terrorist rebel group in Colombia disqualified Venezuela from such a meeting. Speaking to the Cuban American National Foundation, Obama said the following.

"We will shine a light on any support for the FARC that comes from neighboring governments. This behavior must be exposed to international condemnation, regional isolation, and -- if need be -- strong sanctions. It must not stand."

Thank God for the qualifier. Strong sanctions? Whoa! hold on there big guy. You’re inexperienced in foreign affairs and all, but you just can’t go around threatening sanctions, especially strong ones, without months and years of delays, negotiations, aggressive diplomacy, and Security Council debates. You don’t want to blow all your options in one fell swoop.

Mocking aside, there are a couple of bigger points to make from this.

Read on...

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | foreign policy | Hugo Chavez | Liberals | Obamafiles — Comments (7)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:00am on May 23, 2008 Obama Would Dance to Chavez’s Tune

“Hi, President Chavez. What Can I Do For You?”

By Mark I

After weeks of backtracking on his pledge to meet unconditionally with the leaders of Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba, Sen. Barack Obama has doubled down on his dangerous foreign policy naiveté, telling the Orlando Sentinel yesterday that not only would he have no pre-conditions for the meetings, he wouldn’t even have an agenda. Speaking of a future meeting with Venezuelan dictator, and soon to be internationally recognized terrorist supporter, Hugo Chavez, Obama said that whatever Hugo would want to talk about would be just fine with him.

I would be willing to initiate such talks with leaders of countries adversarial to the United States. There would be a lot of preparation. The first steps would not be to pre-judge all the items on the list. […]

One of the obvious high priorities in my talks with President Hugo Chavez would be the fermentation of anti-American sentiment in Latin America, his support of FARC in Colombia and other issues he would want to talk about. It is important to understand that ignoring these countries has not led to improved behavior on their part and it has not served our national security interests.

There needs to be a shift in foreign politics and return to traditional foreign politics that were supported by both Republicans and Democrats in the past.

First of all, it’s difficult to determine from his words whether Sen. Obama believes that the, "fermentation of anti-American sentiment," and Chavez’s, "support of FARC in Colombia," are necessarily bad things. Obama could have said, "the disturbing fermentation of anti-American sentiment," or, "his unacceptable support of the terrorist group FARC in Colombia." But he didn’t. Chavez certainly does not think that his behavior needs to improve. For all we know, Obama doesn’t either. He won’t pre-judge it. Rather he would reward Chavez by granting him the honor of a meeting of equals, complete with unspecified agenda items that would take Chavez’s phony complaints about U.S. imperialism at face value.

Second, if Obama holds so low an opinion of the Office of the Presidency that he would use the office to bend and scrape at the feet of thugs like Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-Il, one wonders why he is running for it.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | foreign policy | Hugo Chavez | Liberals | Obamafiles — Comments (15)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:29am on May 16, 2008 Imperialism

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

As if any more evidence was needed to show that Hugo Chavez means to destabilize the region:

High-ranking officials in Venezuela offered to help Colombian guerrillas obtain surface-to-air missiles meant to change the balance of power in their war with the Colombian government, according to internal rebel documents.

Venezuelan officials served as middlemen with Australian arms dealers and agreed to help the rebel commanders travel to the Middle East to receive missile training, according to files on computer hard drives seized by Colombian authorities and shown to The Washington Post. In interviews, Colombian officials said they have no evidence that the guerrillas obtained the antiaircraft missiles but added that Venezuelan authorities appear to have provided light arms, thousands of rounds of ammunition and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

The disclosures have already started to reverberate in the Bush administration and among Latin America policymakers on Capitol Hill, where a small group of Republicans has proposed classifying Venezuela, a major oil exporter to the United States, as a state sponsor of terrorism. The United States and Europe long ago blacklisted the rebel organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as a terrorist group.

Posted in Foreign Affairs | Hugo Chavez | Venezuela — Comments (3)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:23pm on Apr. 24, 2008 A Thumb In Hugo Chavez's Eye

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

I am for just about anything that increases opposition to Hugo Chavez and flips him the bird politically. Kudos to the Cato Institute for doing its part to give the would-be dictator something to be angry and upset about:

The Cato Institute has announced that Yon Goicoechea, leader of the pro-democracy student movement in Venezuela that successfully prevented President Hugo Chávez's regime from seizing broad dictatorial powers in December 2007, has been awarded the 2008 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty.

A 23-year-old law student, Mr. Goicoechea plays a pivotal role in organizing and voicing opposition to the erosion of human and civil rights in his country. In his commitment to a modern Venezuela, Goicoechea emphasizes tolerance and the human right to seek prosperity.

Venezuela's student movement emerged in May of 2007 in response to a government-ordered shutdown of the nation's oldest private television station, RCTV.  In the face of ongoing death threats and continual intimidation due to his prominent and vocal leadership, Mr. Goicoechea has been indispensible in organizing massive, peaceful student protest marches that have captured the world's attention.

By December of 2007, the student movement was credited with defeating a proposed constitutional reform that would have concentrated unprecedented political and economic power in the hands of the government.

"Yon Goicoechea is making an extraordinary contribution to liberty," said Edward Crane, President of the Cato Institute. "We hope the Friedman Prize will help further his non-violent advocacy for basic freedoms in an increasingly militaristic and anti-democratic Venezuela."

Goicoechea may not exactly have best life in the world, right now; as you can tell in the pictures, he was physically attacked by Chavez supporters for his anti-regime advocacy and ended up with a broken nose in the process (I am sure that the regime has more in store for him). It is dangerous to make an enemy out of Hugo Chavez. But it is extraordinarily brave as well and it is to be hoped that the international attention that comes with the award of the Friedman Prize will help ensure that nothing untoward will happen to Goicoechea. Dissidents in Venezuela need all the support that they can get, after all.

Posted in Authoritarianism | Contra Tyrannum | Dictatorship | Hugo Chavez | Tyranny | Venezuela — Comments (2)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:40pm on Apr. 20, 2008 Making "Bolivarian" A Dirty Word

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

It has been a long time--far too long, one might add--since we have had the opportunity to note the latest misadventures of Hugo Chavez. Let's catch up, shall we?

First, let's note this article, which points out that hubris continues to be a problem for the Chavez regime:

The notion that Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez would ease his radical policies after last December's humbling defeat in a national referendum on constitutional reform has been quickly disabused. His administration has launched new attacks on the private sector--taking over two food companies and in recent days announcing plans to nationalise the cement industry. The three foreign cement-makers that dominate the industry have been targeted, but few companies anywhere in private sector will feel safe after the recent government moves.

The Chávez administration has argued for some time that the state should have greater control over what it deems to be strategic industries. In 2007 he took over the largest telecommunications and electricity companies, and also imposed new contracts on foreign oil companies that gave the state a majority stake in existing heavy-oil joint-ventures.

Yet Mr Chávez seemed to tone down his radical rhetoric a bit after losing the referendum, which sought, among other constitutional changes, to eliminate presidential term limits. This apparent shift proved to be short-lived.

Read on . . .

Posted in Foreign Affairs | Hugo Chavez | Ignorance | Venezuela — Comments (2)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:29am on Mar. 25, 2008 Orwell Weeps . . .

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Though the people Orwell warned us against would approve.

Posted at 12:15pm on Mar. 10, 2008 Choosing Sides

Democrats Dither While Colombia Burns

By Mark I

Jeff Emanuel detailed the $18 billion tax increase on oil companies that the Democratic-controlled House pushed through early last week. Buried in that bill was a little publicized gift to Venezuelan dictator, international pariah, and Bush basher extraordinaire, Hugo Chavez. Chavez’s Citgo, which he regularly uses like a personal PR firm with its offers of cheap heating oil to economically underprivileged communities, “From the people of Venezuela,” was exempted from the tax increase imposed on the other major oil companies because it does not get its oil from within the United States. All of Citgo’s supply is furnished by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company.

Meanwhile, Chavez is menacing Colombia over that country’s pursuit of Marxist rebels into neighboring Ecuador. Chavez has massed troops on the border, closed commerce between the two countries, except for perishables, and has called Colombia, “the Israel of Latin America,” among other less attention-grabbing insults. Colombia is an ally of the United States in both the war on terror and the war on drugs; and has been fighting on both fronts simultaneously in its battle with the narco-terrorist rebel group FARC. It was a FARC leader that Colombian forces killed at his camp inside Ecuador, the very same one to whom Chavez had recently pledged $300 million in aid, according to evidence found on the dead terrorist’s computer, the Colombian government has announced.

Where might Hugo Chavez get that kind of money to lavish on terrorist groups in neighboring democratic countries? From Venezuela’s vast oil wealth, perhaps? The same oil wealth that the Democratic Congress just voted to protect by exempting Citgo, the Venezuelan-supplied oil company, from a tax increase imposed on oil companies operating in America? Surely that can’t be.

Oh, it can and more. At the same time Democrats are tossing bouquets in the form of tax exemptions at Chavez, they are blocking Colombia from receiving valuable economic benefits by refusing to discuss let alone pass the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

Read on…

Posted in Colombia | Democrats | Free Trade | Hugo Chavez | Liberals — Comments (10)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:27am on Mar. 8, 2008 Hugo Chavez: Pro-Poverty

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Either that, or he's astonishingly incompetent at being anti-poverty. You make the call. But it is incontrovertible that under Chavez, poverty has had a field day in Venezuela.

Posted at 5:16pm on Mar. 2, 2008 Did You Miss Hugo Chavez?

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Ever since the referendum offering Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez unlimited terms went down to defeat early this year, we have heard little from Latin America's favorite tinhorn dictator. Apparently fearing that we have forgotten all about him, Chavez has decided to burst back onto the international scene:

Venezuela President Hugo Chavez ordered tank battalions to the Colombian border and mobilized warplanes on Sunday after Colombian troops struck inside Ecuador in an attack on rebels.

He also ordered the shutting of Venezuela's embassy in Colombia and the withdrawal of all diplomatic staff in the dispute, warning Colombia's actions could spark a war in South America.

"Mr. Defense Minister, move me 10 battalions to the frontier with Colombia immediately, tank battalions," Chavez said on his weekly TV show. "The air force should mobilize. We do not want war."

Colombia's military said on Saturday troops had killed Raul Reyes, a leader of Marxist FARC rebels, during an attack on a jungle camp in Ecuador in a severe blow to Latin America's oldest guerrilla insurgency. The operation included air strikes and fighting with rebels across the frontier.

On Saturday, the anti-U.S. Chavez warned Colombia against doing the same in Venezuela because he would interpret it as a "cause for war." On Sunday, he said he would send Russian-made fighter jets into U.S. ally Colombia if its troops struck in Venezuela.

About the only good that can stem from all of this is that I can tell people "I told you so." It's always amusing to listen to Hugo Chavez denounce others for imperialism. No one in Latin America practices imperialist policies more fervently than he does.

Posted in Bolivarian Imperialism | Foreign Affairs | Hugo Chavez — Comments (34)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 9:50am on Feb. 16, 2008 Chavez Falling

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

The chickens, they come home to roost. It really shouldn't have taken this long to realize that the "Bolivarian Revolution" was a fraud; it was and is appalling to see how many people outside of Venezuela sought to make excuses for the Chavez regime and its many failings. The people of Venezuela, it would appear, know better than to buy into those excuses.